


Wait, Go, Stop, Repeat

by ismycapsloudenoughforyou



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Aliens, Aliens that want to steal stuff, Gen, Lava Aliens, and no, featuring:, it's such a fun world to explore i couldn't resist, or the family member of a previous companion, rated teen because i have the mouth of a sailor, the character isn't a time lord
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-07-28 16:54:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16245884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ismycapsloudenoughforyou/pseuds/ismycapsloudenoughforyou
Summary: “Should’ve guessed,” she huffed, legs pounding the pavement accompanied by the shouts of the churchgoers. Mostly ‘repent’, although she couldn’t guess why aliens or demons would want her to repent. It felt ironic, too, considering she couldn’t think of a single thing in that moment that she didn’t regret.“Should’ve guessed they were aliens,” she continued, hopping the fence into her backyard. “Coming to the door at two AM.” She hopped the back fence and sprinted through the clearing where the Tardis had sat, the square of crushed grass long gone. “Loitering around the block and side eyeing my window all the time.”She climbed up a tree and shinnied out onto a branch. “And here I thought they just felt personally affronted by my affinity for talking to wooden boxes.” She dropped into the neighbor’s yard, narrowly avoiding a Bible flying past her ear. The wooden fence held as the possessed people pounded on it. “Or because I opened the door and told them no one was home once. Either one, maybe both.”orA foray into the writing style of Doctor Who featuring a new companion character and entirely new settings.





	1. searching for adventure (found a little more than i was looking for)

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, this probably won't be super huge bc OC stories don't get attention on Archive (people here prefer the canon cast). Idk, I just wanted to try my hand at them.
> 
> So each set of chapters seeks to emulate a Doctor Who episode via setting and happenings. Unfortunately for you guys, I'm not a professional author, so whether there'll be a full "season" through line is yet to be determined (but probably not), and the jury's still out on whether it's any good.
> 
> Anyway, the good news is that it's not just a "shove-an-OC-in-an-episode-and-call-it-quits" story, so don't worry.

It was a new house, with a huge backyard. Backyard was the wrong word; it was more like a forest. Nobody owned it, but all the other yards had fences and kids that were too little to wander in there alone, parents that were too busy to go with them, so it was all hers. Her house had a chain link fence, one that blocked their dog from going off the property but didn’t stop her from wandering in. School didn’t start for another few months, the wifi wasn’t up, she’d finished her books (twice), the neighborhood was filled to the brim with kids at least ten years younger than her at the absolute oldest, and she needed something to do.

So she hopped the fence and went looking for adventure.

She hadn’t realized just how much like a forest the wooded area was until she got in. There were bushes up to her chest and weeds knee high. She wondered briefly if maybe she should’ve bought a machete before trying her luck, but the weeds were shorter farther in, where the thicket of leaves above her head blocked out most of the sunlight and choked the weeds out before they could grow.

Leaning against the tree was her adventure.

And her adventure was a box.

Maybe she was only seventeen, but she was looking for an adventure a little more interesting than a box. It wasn’t cardboard, but it looked ancient, the sides caked with a thin layer of dirt and plants growing around the base and up the sides. It looked like it had been there a long time, abandoned.

The doors were locked.

She knocked, more out of courtesy than anything. It was so small, she didn’t expect anyone to be inside, and why would they be? How? There were vines across the door; if anyone had been in or out in the last year they’d have disturbed the foliage. Listening intently, greeted by nothing but the birdsong of the woods, her thoughts were confirmed. No one was inside.

“How did you end up in a residential area?” she mumbled, her fingers trailing over the side of the box, feeling the smooth material, a texture like wood. They left a clean stripe of bright blue amid the dirt. She stood on her toes and brushed the dirt off the black strip at the top. “Police public call box, huh?” She cocked her head to one side. “Didn’t know we ever had those. What’s a police call box doing back here?”

Nothing happened. She hadn’t really been expecting more.

She stepped back, head turned to one side. She wasn’t sure what really elicited the thought, but the box almost seemed lonely. Like it was waiting for something. She voiced this thought aloud, with a wry laugh at the end of the statement. “Can’t believe I’m personifying a telephone box.”

No response. A bird flapped noisily overhead.

“To tell the truth though,” she scratched her neck, “I’m waiting too.”

She stared up at the box, dirty and alone, and realized her decision had been made right when she’d first caught sight of it. She suddenly felt shy, but she smiled. “Maybe we could wait together.”

No response. It was a box. But somehow, she felt a little better.

 

The internet wasn’t connected, but the AC was on now. That was good. She still didn’t spend too much time in the house. Her parents went to their jobs and left her alone. That was just how she liked it. She didn’t want them to catch on that she’d befriended a box.

“My only friend is a box.” She laughed, shaking her head. “Unbelievable.”

She’d borrowed a pair of gardening gloves from the garage and a bucket they usually used for washing cars, intent on cleaning the box. She knew enough about cleaning wood that she knew if she used a small amount of water and didn’t saturate the fibers it wouldn’t cause any damage. And besides, with the signs of age on the box, if it hadn’t already molded it probably wasn’t going to.

She didn’t worry about the neighbors watching her hop the fence back and forth, because she didn’t have to. They were out, the parents at work and the kids at daycare or day camp.

She wrung out her rag, then dabbed it against the side of the box. “Normally I wouldn’t worry about what the neighbors think,” she explained aloud as she worked, the dirty water running down the side in rivlets, getting all over her flip flops, “but we’re new to the neighborhood, and I don’t want them to think I’m crazy during the first week.”

She laughed wryly as she dipped her rag back in the bucket. “Honestly, I don’t know what Mom and Dad were thinking, moving us now of all times. I mean, I’m starting my senior year in less than a week, completely alone, in buttfuck nowhere, same as before, just a bit farther North and a little more religious. Like,” she wrung it out, splashing water on her shirt, “I know we have a baby on the way, but it’s still on the way. And everyone always goes on and on about how this is the most important year of your life, besides all the other important ones they drag on about, but all my friends are miles and miles away, so I’ll be doing it alone.”

She flicked a few droplets of water against the side. “It’s a petty thing to complain about, but you know. Us dumb millennials or whatever. Killing this industry, killing that industry. I’m not even technically a millennial, but I get lumped in there too.”

She dropped the rag back in the bucket and slipped on the gardening gloves, ripping the vines out of the ground and throwing them aside, clearing the weeds away from the base.

It took the whole day, and more than a couple trips back and forth, but she cleaned off the box. The light at the top was the hardest to get. She was afraid she’d short it out, but luckily nothing happened. She was able to clean it without incident.

Her parents asked her what she’d been doing, since her legs were covered in dirt dried in lines from the water running down them, her shorts muddy. She said she’d made herself useful and tried to help out the neighbors down the street by cleaning their patio table, conveniently forgetting which neighbor it had been when pushed.

The box was her little secret. It just felt right.

 

In the weeks after school had started, she’d begun to do her homework perched on top of the box, working through her math aloud.

“It’s actually really helpful,” she voiced her thought aloud, swinging her feet gently. “Talking it through, I mean. It keeps me on one track, since my thought process tends to wander off.”

She’d managed to meet a few people she enjoyed hanging around. None she would consider a friend just yet, but enough that she didn’t feel like the odd man out whenever the teachers called for group work.

“It’s not nearly as bad as I expected,” she noted, tapping her pencil on her homework. “School, I mean. Like it’s not nearly as good as I might’ve got back home, but it’s not so bad.” She scribbled for a second, working out another equation, then paused to punch it into her calculator. “There are a couple Jehovah’s Witnesses knocking on our door. Pretty annoying, to be honest. Guess we must’ve moved in down the street from a church. No wonder we got the lot for so cheap.”

She paused to scribble the last answer with a flourish, packing up. “We finally have internet at the house, by the way. I googled the writing, police public call box. Turns out you’re supposedly from the UK. England, you know.” She traced one hand over the surface of the box distractedly. “Dunno how you ended up here though.” She shook her head. “I’m working on it, I’ll figure it out.”

 

She didn’t figure it out for awhile, though it wasn’t for lack of trying. She looked it up in all sorts of places, always on a private browser or a VPN of course. Something about the box felt like a conspiracy, just the quiet majesty of it. It was a wooden blue box, but she didn’t want to broadcast that she was searching for the owner.

All she’d found were a couple conspiracy sites (that looked like they were coded by a toddler in the 90s, good lord) linking it back to some mysterious ‘Doctor’ character. It sounded more like a TV show premise than a real happening, a man with a blue box who changed face yet never aged. She didn’t put too much stock in it.

“Alright, what’s on the menu today?” she mumbled, flipping through her math book as she swung her legs over the side of the box, careful not to hit it. “Oh right, derivatives. Fantastic.”

She didn’t voice her thought process aloud, feeling oddly conspicuous that day, probably because of the damned churchgoers. There was a legion of them loitering around the block. Must’ve been some sort of convention at the church. Anyway, derivatives weren’t that hard, just frustrating. Her silent working wasn’t the reason she heard the voice, but it definitely helped.

“Hello? Are you still out there?”

She almost fell off the side. “Who’s there?”

“I’m the Doctor. I need your help.”

Her heart thrummed with a mixture of excitement, fear, but also excitement. “Are you pulling my leg?”

“Why would I joke about needing help?”

“I don’t know, some neighbor pulling a prank maybe. Where are you?” She scanned the area, if maybe he was behind a tree, or in one.

“In the Tardis, you know, the blue box.”

“In the- have you been there the whole time?” Her face caught fire.

“Yes, I’ll explain in a moment, could you get in here?”

She dumped her school things into her backpack haphazardly, dropping to the ground and landing in a crouch, a jolt of pain shooting up from her heels. She tried the door again. “It’s locked.”

“Push.”

“I am!”

“I swear I unlocked it.” He stopped talking for a second, maybe messing with the door. His voice sounded oddly strained when he spoke again. “Well I’m in no position to unlock it now; you’ll have to find another way in.”

Okay, fine. She could do that. She exhaled. “You mind if I talk it through? It helps me if I think out loud.”

“Go for it.”

She knelt on the ground, ignoring the feeling of the dirt on her bare knees. There was a keyhole, and she’d been practicing her lockpicking. She’d been able to break into her own house the day she forgot her keys the previous week. “I don’t suppose I could pick the lock?”

“Nope.”

“Dang,” she said, not really disappointed. She’d been expecting that response. Her thought process jumped to other ways, and she tried the knob again, pushing gently with her left hand against the top of the door. A breeze caressed her pinky. She frowned. “Airflow.” She pushed a little harder. The top bent inward, but the bottom didn’t move. She sat back on her feet, chewing her lip. “But what does it mean?”

She pushed on the bottom. It didn’t move. She hit it with the heel of her hand, and it jumped inward slightly. There was a draft along the edge of the door, she was getting somewhere. She hit it again.

“Oi, what’re you doing?”

“It’s not locked, it’s jammed. A doorstop or something, I don’t know.” Her thought process spilled out in semi broken pieces.

“Then what are you waiting for?”

“I don’t want to break the door.” She got to her feet.

“You’re not going to break the door, come on, just get in here.”

“I’m working on it!” She pulled in a breath, exhaled, whispered an apology, and hip checked the door. It shuddered, moving inward about an inch, but held. She hit it again, moving a half inch. Crouching down, she slipped her hand through the crack. It didn’t quite fit, but with the way the door was going whatever was jamming it wasn’t too far from the crack anyhow. She couldn’t find it, so she slipped off her shoe and kicked the base of the door with the flat of her foot. It gave a little more. She reached inside, her fingers lighting on a piece of metal wedged under the door. It was an awkward angle, she felt like she was going to break her wrist or maybe a finger but she tugged on it and the corner of the door pressed on her wrist until it felt like a line of fire across the skin but she pulled again-

It pulled free and the door opened.

And she fell sideways onto the floor of the box.

She didn’t have the time to marvel, but boy did she want to. She knew the outside of this box like the back of her hand, probably better, and based on human physics there would have been no way this room had fit in there. She would know, she took the class. The room was bigger than her bedroom, all lit up in orange and yellow, a warm spectrum, with arches from floor to walls to top like those on a cathedral ceiling except without the Gothic intimidation factor. They had smoother edges, curling upwards like DNA strands. It was magnificent.

But she didn’t have time to marvel, so she wouldn’t.

Discarding the metal piece that had been jammed under the door, she scrambled to her feet, neglecting to put her shoe back on in her haste. “Now what?”

“Now I need you to grab my sonic screwdriver.”

“Your what?”

“My sonic screwdriver; it’s like a screwdriver, but it’s sonic. It’s in my jacket pocket.”

“And where is that?”

“I’m wearing it.”

She let out a breath that vaguely sounded like ‘oh boy’ and made her way around the Tardis controls. A person she assumed was the Doctor was suspended unmoving in midair as though someone had frozen him while he was falling, wearing a suit she might describe as tweed if she knew for certain what the word meant. He faced the ground, making it hard to see his face, but his hair was a mess of brown curls. And, she realized, he had an English accent (with maybe a hint of something else too).

“Inside pocket, left side,” he instructed. She carefully reached into his suit jacket, retrieving the device. “Setting nineteen B, if you please, gem facing me and press the button.”

She did as instructed, the high pitched squall of the sonic screwdriver reaching her ears. A few seconds later, the Doctor unfroze and hit the floor face first. He popped up before she’d even had time to gasp, brushing the dust off his jacket and darting over to scoop up the metal piece from the floor. “So this was what was jamming the door then?”

“Yes.” She trailed behind, thoroughly intimidated. Then again she was always intimidated, but especially now that her worldview had shifted almost completely.

“Hmm.” He inspected it, holding it close to his face. “Simple tech, Medduntuan, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Is that a species?”

“Yes, a fairly ancient one, all things considered. You weren’t wrong, it does appear to be a doorstop.” He stuffed it in a pocket and finally turned to her. She felt almost like a deer in the headlights as he looked her up and down. “Now, if you don’t mind, could you tell me my exact location?”

“Um- Billings, Montana, United States of America, on the planet known as Earth by its inhabitants, October second.” She listed all the information she could think of as relevant. “Postal code 59102.”

“I suppose you’re human then?” he asked. She nodded. She hadn’t thought it was optional, but she supposed now it must be. How else would the box exist?

“I suppose you’re not human?”

“Nope.” He moved to the controls (she assumed they were the controls, what else could they be?), messing with them, checking a dead screen every so often.

“So how’d you end up in Billings?”

“Now that’s a long story.” He checked the display, flicking another lever. Nothing changed, the screen staying as dead as before. “Basically, there were these intergalactic mercenaries. They pulled the Tardis onto their ship and got me out in the open. I managed to evade them and return to the Tardis, but a couple of their drones snuck on board. I could shut down the trackers but they trapped me in a pocket of suspended animation before I could do much else. They shut down the Tardis and she crashed here.” He motioned around. “In Billings.”

“If it was mercenaries, then do you know who hired them?”

“No idea!” he said cheerfully, flicking a lever, checking the screen, and turning to look at her. “But I’ll figure it out. They already tried to get rid of me once, but look, it didn’t work! I won’t be caught off guard next time.”

He vanished under the Tardis controls, metal pieces clanking against each other and rattling around. She crouched down, resting her hands on her knees, watching him work, curious. “If you were in here the whole time, why didn’t you speak up before?”

“Up until today the suspended animation pocket covered every part of me. The battery started to run low, which shortened the diameter of the pocket and gave back my head.”

“Could you hear everything?” she asked hesitantly. “The whole time?”

He met her eyes. “The whole time.”

She blew out a breath with a mumbled, “oh boy.”

“If it’s any consolation,” the Doctor said, “you’re quite creative.”

 _Not intelligent._ Not that she’d been expecting him to say that, anyway. She supposed a man like him was much more intelligent than she was. The rapid fire way he spoke made her think he was a man who was used to knowing what was going on.

She’d always been used to deferring to a higher authority.

Something metal crashed to the floor and the room shuddered. She stumbled back into the railing. The Doctor emerged again, holding another piece of metal and beaming widely. “There we go!”

“What happened?” Her voice shook more than was maybe dignified, and only part of that was the Tardis vibrating.

“They placed a device on the controls that forcefully shut the Tardis down.” He waved the metal piece at her. “I removed it.”

The vibrations settled into an indistinct hum, so quiet she might not have noticed if not for the silence from before.

“Now,” he dusted himself off again, despite there being no evidence of dirt, “I’ll have to go see about finding whoever hired those mercenaries.”

“Alright, well- you have fun,” she said awkwardly.

“ ‘Course.”

It was a clear dismissal, so she didn’t waste time in getting out and scooping her backpack off the ground. A soft wind began to blow through the area and the Tardis blinked in and out of existence with a distinct wheezing, grinding sound she knew she’d never forget.

And then it was gone, and the only evidence of the Doctor and his Tardis was the square of crushed grass on the ground where he’d been.

 

So maybe she regretted just leaving, a little more than a little, especially when she realized the doorstop had ended up outside the Tardis somehow, even though she swore she saw him stick it in his pocket.

So now she had an alien doorstop, she supposed. She used it like a binder clip. It was big enough. A brilliant use of alien tech, she knew. Unfortunately, she wasn’t very sciency, and she wasn’t about to mess with something she really didn’t understand. No telling what sorts of things she’d stir up. No, it was best not to touch. She’d prefer to _not_ be the tv show extra that dies before the title sequence.

But she was curious. Very curious. Who wouldn’t be? She’d been monologuing her bullshit at a spaceship and alien combination that had been parked in her backyard for months, and now she was using an extraterrestrial doorstop as a clip for the revising draft of her essay. So, she did research. Science research. By far it had never been her favorite subject, but if there really was life beyond that which she knew, she wasn’t about to get caught with her foot in her mouth.

And then she found reports of a spaceship in London crashing into Big Ben in the early 2000s and things got a bit more interesting.

“It’s a hoax,” her mother scoffed at the video of an old newscast the girl was playing on her phone.

“But there’s footage.” She gestured at the video with a jelly covered knife.

Her mother scoffed again. “Edited. It’s probably a green screen. Maybe a hologram. Or a puppet. Probably a push for tourism.”

That didn't make sense to her, because why would they stage a dangerous invasion to get tourists to come? But obviously that showed how much she knew so she kept her mouth shut and finished making her sandwich.

Her brother visited home over Christmas break. At some point over dinner her mother brought up the girl’s strange new fascination with the alien happenings, with the usual disdain. He pulled her aside and they sat awake in her bedroom as he gave her his account of the things that happened, all the aliens from the times she was too young to remember.

He told her about the spaceship in the sky over London while he was there on a school trip, and the terror that clenched his chest because his best friend was standing on a roof and there was nothing he could do. He told her about watching the ship explode, and how the ash fell like snow that night, and about the day the stars vanished from the sky and all that remained were a group of planets suspended in the sky, and all the times they’d been momentarily invaded, and the time strange cubes littered the sidewalk for a year.

He gave her a pair of hiking boots, sturdy but flexible. “They were supposed to be mine but they didn’t fit, so you’re the next option down,” he teased, but she knew he’d never buy boots in her size on accident and he was full of bull. She ran in them, around the block and to the grocery store and in the gym. She ran because they were a reminder of that night, when the ash fell from the sky like snow and creatures were killed without reason and she didn’t even hear of it, not from the parents or from school, not until she’d gone looking for it, but wasn’t that how it always was?

She ran to escape the thick soup of thoughts that swirled in her head. Usually.

Right now, she was running to escape the herd of possessed churchgoers chasing her down the street, hell bent on beating her brains out with their bibles.

And it was exactly as weird as it sounded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note that i have nothing against any form of organized religion. literally this spawned from how fun 'bible thumpers' was to say and an incredibly odd conversation in french class


	2. everyone's an alien (why am i not surprised)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The red car blew past, sounding its horn angrily and she whirled, barely pausing before throwing herself across the third lane and into the median. Three more lanes to the other side. She waited for an opening, adrenaline leading her to take the chance and throw herself across the first lane between two cars, simply praying that she’d make it. She could hear the crowd behind her as she stood in that center lane, the cars sounding their horns, tires squealing as they swerved around the people. One lane to go and she’d be home free to book it down the shoulder, hide in the treeline. Maybe she’d fly to Iceland and become an isolated sheepherder.
> 
> She threw herself through the last gap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my friend seems to enjoy this, so here's an update. hi alex. thanks for supporting my stuff.
> 
> again, nothing against organized religion, religious people, or Jehovah's Witnesses, just that it was fun to find as many synonyms of 'bible thumper' as possible

“Should’ve guessed,” she huffed, legs pounding the pavement accompanied by the shouts of the churchgoers. Mostly ‘repent’, although she couldn’t guess why aliens or demons would want her to repent. It felt ironic, too, considering she couldn’t think of a single thing in that moment that she didn’t regret.

“Should’ve guessed they were aliens,” she continued, hopping the fence into her backyard. Lucy was in the house, thank god; she’d off herself if the legion of bible thumpers trampled her poor puppy. “Coming to the door at two AM.” She hopped out and sprinted through the clearing where the Tardis had sat, the square of crushed grass long gone. “Loitering around the block and side eying my window all the time.”

She climbed up a tree and shinnied out onto a branch. “And here I thought they just felt personally affronted by my affinity for talking to wooden boxes.” She dropped into the neighbor’s yard, narrowly avoiding a Bible flying past her ear. The wooden fence held as the possessed people pounded on it. “Or because I opened the door and told them no one was home once. Either one, maybe both.”

The gate back out to the street was locked, a padlock she didn’t have time to pick, but there was enough room that she could push off the gate latch and hop it. The shock of the impact jolted up the back of her heels, and not for the first time she wished she hadn’t quit gymnastics so she knew how to land different to a tv superhero landing, but she didn’t stop and took off again, tearing down the block.

Feeling far enough from the possessed army, she took out the alien doorstop. “Is this your fault?” she asked it accusingly. “And here I thought we were learning to work together. I trust you with the biggest paper of my educational career and you sic a possessed army on me?”

It didn’t respond. It was a doorstop. She really needed to stop making a habit of talking to inanimate objects. People were going to think she was crazy.

The sound of wood splintering sent her running again, stuffing the doorstop back into her pocket.

 

“We’ve got a spaceship inbound. Projected trajectory should take it down over the continental United States.”

The official sighed. “Well at least it’s not London for once.” He moved over to look over the woman’s shoulder. “Any sign of him?”

“Not a word.”

The harried commander rubbed his forehead in agitation. “Keep broadcasting,” he instructed. “We have to keep trying.”

“What if he doesn’t show?”

He turned back to the screens, clasping his hands behind him. “We take action,” he said finally. “Until then, we keep watching. Keep on the phone with the President and make sure this doesn’t turn into war.”

He turned away. “Any sort of response, any sign. Keep me posted.”

 

Instinct told her to take her regular path and get out of the neighborhood, but that always took her by the church and if there were more crazies, they’d be there. She took the opposite way, a sidewalk she hadn’t been down, the one running by a ditch, treeline, and ten yards away from the busy street. Cars whipped past on the other side of the trees, just out of sight. The sound of the splintering wood faded into the distance. She slowed to an easy jog instead of a dead sprint, taking the doorstop out of her pocket again.

“Maybe it’s the whatevers. The- Maddentans. Medduntuans. Those things.” Her brow creased as she inspected the little thing again, listening for any noises, mechanical or otherwise, that might signal that it had been broadcasting a signal. She stopped, chest heaving, straining her ears.

No noise from the doorstop, but the thunder of a crowd running at top speed reached her, the sound bouncing off the tops of the houses. Her heart pounded, she could feel it in her throat as a rising terror threatened to choke the air out of her lungs.

 _I need to get out of the neighborhood_.

She turned and sprinted into the treeline, down into the ditch and up to the shoulder of the road. No time to take any of the usual routes, maybe find a crosswalk. She could hear the mob shouting, and it sounded like they’d doubled in number. It was time to see if she could play Frogger in real time.

She bounced on the balls of her feet, watching for an opening. _There,_ behind the silver car. It flashed past, and she leapt onto the road, making a concerted effort to ignore the lead in her bloodstream turning her legs to concrete. There were three lanes, and she was already in lane two. If this red car could floor it, she could be off the road in two seconds flat. Against her better judgement, she glanced back.

A flood of people climbed out of the ditch. Their faces were filled with mad bloodlust, their shouts overlapping into a dissonant chorus with the cars whipping by her and the blood rushing in her ears, shouts of “repent” and children’s voices demanding she “give it back!” It looked like whatever had possessed the church found more hosts, because it seemed like the rest of the block had joined the chase. She wasn’t a match for that many people, they were going to kill her, all over a doorstop? How was she going to-

The red car blew past, sounding its horn angrily and she whirled, barely pausing before throwing herself across the third lane and into the median. Three more lanes to the other side. She waited for an opening, adrenaline leading her to take the chance and throw herself across the first lane between two cars, simply praying that she’d make it. She could hear the angry crowd behind her as she stood in that center lane, the cars sounding their horns, tires squealing as they swerved around the people. One lane to go and she’d be home free to book it down the shoulder, hide in the treeline. Maybe she’d fly to Iceland and become an isolated sheepherder.

She threw herself through the last gap.

The car nearly clipped her elbow, but she made it through, scraping her hands on the concrete shoulder as she landed hard. She didn’t pause for that, taking off. She hadn’t run so hard since the Pacer test in eighth grade, but she wasn’t about to die over a doorstop. _Maybe I could just drop it?_ She glanced at the metal still clenched in her fist. No, she couldn’t. It probably wasn’t just a doorstop, if they were really after it. Later she’d probably feel stupid when it turned out it just held sentimental value to its owner, but for now she could keep going with it, so continue she did.

Streetlights be damned, she was jaywalking all over the place. At least if she got hit by a car she’d go out naturally and not to aliens.

Well, about as naturally as one could go after being hit by a car.

She ducked down an alley, climbed over the wall at the end, and pressed herself against the side, taking a second to breathe, chest heaving, trying to keep quiet even as she sucked deep gulps of air. _Okay, use your noggin, you idiot. They were shouting ‘repent’, which is just a cliché hyper christian thing to say, but it probably means something. Why would they want me to repent?_

There were a lot of reasons she could think of, but none of them were reasons she’d made obvious to the neighbors, so that was out. _Okay, so why would aliens want me to repent?_ The obvious reason was because she’d stolen something of theirs, which was probably the doorstop-which-likely-wasn’t-a-doorstop. The kids had been shouting for her to “give it back” as well. It was definitely the doorstop.

 _Okay, so if I know what they want, what do I do about it?_ She sucked in a breath and held it, cheeks puffing up as she tried to think, maybe get some oxygen to her brain. Something knocked over a trash can in the alley at her back, and she stopped breathing entirely. It was climbing up on the dumpsters it was going over the wall she was suffocating she needed air but _there’s something there oh god it’ll kill me lord help us all_ -

“Hello!”

The enthusiastic greeting stopped her heart and restarted it all at the same time.

“You’re,” the Doctor continued with a grunt as he pulled himself over the wall, “hard to track down, you know that?”

Still shocked, she forced a shrug. “Not so hard, just follow the bible thumpers.”

“Yeah, ‘s what I did.” He rolled over the top of the wall, dusting off his coat. “What’d you do to get an army on your tail?”

“So far as I can tell they’re after this, whatever it is.” She held out her palm, the doorstop sitting in plain view. He snatched it up, beaming his sonic screwdriver at it with an unreadable expression, something between bewilderment and confusion.

“How long have you had this?” he asked.

“Since you left, so some eight or nine months.” She shrugged. “Found it by where your Tardis was the next day. What is it?”

“Seems to be a Siqnak scout droid, usually harmless, but this one’s been programmed with weaponry.”

“What kinds of weapons?” she asked slowly, not entirely sure she wanted to know.

“The standard stuff.” He turned it over in his hands, running the screwdriver over its surfaces. “Laser guns, explosives that can obliterate a house in a second, that sort of thing.”

“So you’re saying I’ve been using a deadly weapon as a _paperclip_ for eight months?”

“Yep.” He tossed the doorstop (weapon) back to her. “You got lucky. It was out of power, but with the ship on the way it would’ve restarted in approximately,” he checked his watch, “nine minutes and thirty six seconds.”

And then murder. Okay, she could follow that. “It _would_ have,” she mused. “So you shut it down?”

“And disabled the tracker. They should have a harder time finding you now.” He checked around the corner before heading out of the alley. She followed, managing to match his quick pace despite her sore legs.

“So what about the ship? How do we make them go away?”

“Working on that.” He pulled in a noisy breath through his teeth. “First I’ve got to know what they’re here for.”

“The mob was shouting for me to give something back,” she offered, lifting the tiny drone. “I figured it was this, but I didn’t think I should until I knew for sure what it was. You know, make sure it wasn’t some super dangerous weapon they’d loose upon the earth the minute it was ready. I mean, they wouldn’t go through all this over a doorstop, right?”

“They wouldn’t go wild over some little scout drone either, unless it had something important.” He snatched the drone from her hand again, aiming his screwdriver at it. “Question is, what do they need from it?”

He looked like he was concentrating, so she treated it like a rhetorical question and kept her mouth shut. Besides, she had no idea, earthly or otherwise.

“You said you found it near where the Tardis was?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

He stopped dead, his mouth falling open. “ _No-_ it can’t be- but it has to-” he mumbled to himself in that manner for a couple seconds, before suddenly bouncing on his heels with a great shout of, “ _Yes!_ ”

“You know what they’re here for?”

“Yes, the Siqnak are scavengers, meaning they search for anything that’s been left behind, energy, resources, whatever. After I left they went looking for anything I’d left behind, residual energy and the like, and that’s when the drone lost power and you found it. Earth is still a level 5 planet, making it criminally punishable to be harvesting any part of the ecosystem so having a large ship in the galaxy would’ve been suspicious so they weren’t able to launch an attack to get their drone back until now because the ship’s arrived, _that’s it!_ ” He seemed thrilled to have figured out their motivations at last. She just wished he wouldn’t talk so quickly, all these strange concepts. What even was a level five planet?

“So they do want it back?” she asked.

“You bet!” He took off running, back towards the road she’d crossed earlier.

“But why didn’t they just ask me to give it back, instead of chasing me with an army?”

“Their grasp of your language must not be good enough for that. Earth’s still taking its first few steps into the rest of the universe, you know. Probably they only knew those few phrases.” He looked back at her. “Or they didn’t want to.”

“Excuse to invade, then?” She considered that, trying to puzzle out what he’d been saying before. “They’re scavengers, and you said it was illegal to harvest things from the Earth. Could be we have chemical resources they could use, and with theft of property as their excuse they could forgo stealth and just suck us dry under the guise of getting their property back?”

He glanced at her, looking satisfied. “You’re good.”

She blushed.

“Right!” He skidded to a halt in front of the blue box, retrieving a key from his pocket. She couldn’t help the soft smile on her face at seeing the box again, thrumming with life. At least _it_ wasn’t waiting anymore. “Come on then!” He pushed the door open and walked inside.

Deciding not to vocalize her surprise at being invited in, she followed after. He made for the controls in the center, but she took a second to look around. She hadn't really had time to previously, although now that she thought about it she really didn't have time now either. She shook herself, trying to stop gawking like a country bumpkin in the big leagues and joined him by the controls as he darted around, flicking switches.

“If we get the drone back to their ship they’ll lose their excuse to invade,” he explained, punching a button. “They’re afraid of the Shadow Proclamation, so they’ll probably back off.”

“What do we do if they don’t?”

He paused, shrugging. “Didn’t think that far. Now,” he pulled on a lever and took up a mallet, to her shock, “hold on!”

He pulled a lever with a satisfying clunk, and that scraping, wheezing noise she hadn’t been able to forget filled her ears again. She didn’t have too much time to think about it, as the room pitched around her, and she quickly took hold of the console, crouching down to press her shoulders against it and maybe stay a little bit stabilized. The shaking didn’t last very long, and she straightened back up a few moments later, none the worse for wear.

“Did we make it?” she asked.

“Should have, yes.” He checked the screen. “Yup, we’re here.” He launched himself over to the doors in a few long steps, leaving her scrambling along behind him. He paused at the door, looking back at her for a second. “By the way, try to leave the talking to me, if it comes down to parley. Okay?”

“Got it.”

“And don’t wander off!” he warned, arrowing a finger at her, before pulling the doors open and stepping onto the Siqnak ship.

While her primary concern should’ve maybe been if they had breathable atmosphere, she was far too distracted by the sight of a spaceship to truly be paying attention to that. It was everything and nothing like she’d expected, somewhat shadowy with blinking lights and some fog floating through the beam of the lights, smoke, maybe, or some other chemical. It looked rough, too, like someone had poured black tar over a frame and let it dry however it wanted. She brushed her hand over the wall, careful not to cut herself. “Feels like lava rock.”

“An astute observation Miss-” He looked at her expectantly.

“Amanda. Um, Amanda Jackson.”

“Miss Jackson,” he finished. “You’ll find the Siqnak come from a post volcanic planet.”

“So they live in the magma vents?”

“Exactly.”

He moved forward cautiously, taking a familiar device out of his pocket. “We appear to have landed in a storage cupboard.”

“Storing what?”

“Good question.” He glanced around. “Doesn’t appear to be storing anything, at the moment.”

He started to mess with the door, moving his sonic screwdriver around the edges. She inspected the closet, as though she’d find something interesting (she didn’t). The door clicked, and she turned to see it swing open. “Got it!” the Doctor chirped. “Come on then!”

At least he was excited. Apprehensively, she followed him through the ship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the doctor is a hard character to write. which is exactly why i'm doing this. it's a nice challenge. kinda fun too.


	3. elbow room, EL-bow room, got to got to get us some elbow room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ship rumbled ominously, and the Captain stirred, a pair of great black eyes opening on his head. They reminded her of a fish too, large and almost unblinking, although she supposed they could close, so maybe they weren’t exactly like a fish. But it was an uncanny comparison.
> 
> If they were lava mermaids she was gonna flip shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you might be wondering what the chapter title means
> 
> me too.
> 
> just kidding i have an idea of what it means you'll see later.

“Ah, here we go!” The Doctor threw open a door with a grin. Slightly more wary, Amanda peered around his skinny frame into the room. And _oh man_ it was nothing like she’d imagined. If she was honest, literally none of the science-y research, or even the conspiracy theories, could’ve prepared her for this thing. It was _huge_ . Like, _huge_! Maybe like, American football stadium huge!

Okay maybe not quite that big, but with the claustrophobic tunnels she’d just come out of it certainly felt that way.

Quickly getting past the size of the room (or forcing herself to), she focused on the aliens littering the room, equidistant to each other. The Siqnak were gray and spindly, vaguely humanoid and perhaps her height or maybe a little shorter, seated in chairs of what appeared to be roughly cut lava rock with computer circuits built in, the silvery metal shining against the dark rock.

“What’s that on their heads?” she whispered. “That sensor looking thing.” It kind of reminded her of those things scientists used to track brain activity.

He almost looked impressed, but she didn’t really have a clue. The guy had a spaceship, maybe this was his disappointed face. “It’s the ship’s controls. Each of them look after a specific portion of the ship. That there, in the center,” he pointed to where the fifty yard line would be if it was a football stadium, “is the Captain.”

The Captain looked almost the same as the other Siqnak, if not for the solid golden circle on the floor around their control chair and a sharp wave on its forehead like something off a fish, maybe, or the spiky hairstyle of a punk kid in the early 2000s, charcoal and tipped with red.

“Careful not to step into the circles,” the Doctor warned as they began to make their way down to the Siqnak Captain. She made note of that and kept her eyes on her feet, noticing how each chair was surrounded by a thin ring of gold.

“How are they controlling the ship then?” she asked in a hushed voice. “None of them are talking to each other, or even moving.”

“The headsets. They’re a telepathic network, transmitting the brainwaves between the Captain and his men.”

Oh. So maybe she was half right. _Half credit’s better than no credit._

They stopped at the edge of the Captain’s circle. “So how do we wake him up?” she asked.

“Like this.” The Doctor suddenly hopped forward, landing just inside the golden circle. The ship rumbled ominously, and the Captain stirred, a pair of great black eyes opening on his head. They reminded her of a fish too, large and almost unblinking, although she supposed they could close, so maybe they weren’t exactly like a fish. But it was an uncanny comparison.

If they were lava mermaids she was gonna flip shit.

A gowing golden line shot between her feet, illuminating a thin trail of gold between the solid golden Captain’s circle and the Siqnak behind her. It stirred, removing its sensor helmet. Around the Captain other Siqnak were stirring (she counted eight), also removing their helmets and standing. She froze, her fight or flight instinct catching midway, as it was wont to do, the stupid thing.

“Don’t worry, they’re just guards,” the Doctor called over his shoulder to her as the guards moved forward. “They won’t see you as a threat unless you cross into one of the circles.”

She wasn’t really sure if she should believe him, but stayed where she was. Sure enough, the guard ignored her, for the most part, pushing past her to line the circumference of the Captain’s circle. She was about to start breathing again when they primed what were pretty obviously their weapons with a high pitched whine. Her breath caught in her throat again,

“I’m invoking Convention 15 of the Shadow Proclamation,” the Doctor said calmly. After a second, the guards lowered their weapons. “Captain, my name’s the Doctor, this is Amanda. We’ve come to return your property.” He lifted the tiny drone on a flat palm.

The Captain merely looked at it. A guard stepped into the circle and plucked the drone from the Doctor’s palm.

“It has been tampered with.”

The Captain’s voice was basically what she imagined magma sounded like, bubbling and hissing. She was revising her statement in her head. If they _weren’t_ magma mermaids she was going to flip shit. Literally everything was pointing that way.

Which begged the question, did they have magma on the ship?

Most likely they did.

Which was just _great_.

“It’s easily fixed,” the Doctor said calmly, snapping her back into the moment. “In fact, permission to fix it right this minute?”

The Captain gave him another long look, one Amanda might have crumpled under. “Granted,” he finally said.

The Doctor pulled his sonic screwdriver out of his jacket pocket and flicked it on, aiming it at the drone. A few seconds later it shuddered, mechanisms inside it clicking.

“See?” The Doctor pocketed his screwdriver again. “Good as new.”

“It has been tampered with,” the Captain repeated. “The people of this planet have damaged it.”

“It isn’t damaged, look it’s fine!” The Doctor gestured to the drone.

“Under Clause 374 of the Shadow Proclamation we are authorized to invade.”

“No, no you aren’t. You’re only authorized to get it back, but you have it now.”

The guard in front of Amanda abruptly turned, taking hold of both her arms. Caught off guard, she struggled against the grip, but it was so solid she may as well have been struggling against a wall or something. “Doctor!”

He turned, his face filling with shock as he took in the situation. He whirled back to the Captain. “What are you doing?”

The guard with the drone moved over, setting the drone in the hood of her jacket. They pushed her backwards, across the thin golden line that marked one of the guards’ circle, and stepped back. The Doctor pushed between them, hitting against an invisible barrier at the edge of the golden circle which became visible the moment he touched it, iridescent golden lines rippling under his hands.

“What are you doing?” he demanded again.

“Under Clause 374 of the Shadow Proclamation, we are authorized to invade.”

“ _Teleportation in thirty seconds_.”

“No, no, it doesn’t work like that,” he insisted. “They’ll know you had the artifact, they’ll know you sent it back.”

“You are the only ones who know.” The Captain’s mouth turned up in a lopsided smile. “You will not know for long.”

The Doctor turned back to her. “Okay listen, the teleportation beam is going to put you down where the ship is going to land. UNIT should be there, it’s this bunch of soldiers in berets. Get to them and ask for Martha Jones, she’ll be able to help you.”

“Okay.” Her voice was as small as she felt, and it felt like all the air was being squeezed out of her chest, but the drone wasn’t doing anything, just sitting in her hood and buzzing ominously. “You’ll be okay, right? You’ll find your way out?”

“ _Teleportation in five seconds_.”

He looked at her, just looked, and the world shifted around her.

She tripped immediately upon landing, hands slamming painfully into the pavement. She stood and brushed herself off, checking to make sure her hands weren’t bleeding. “So that’s a _no_ , then,” she mumbled. “Okay.”

She heard a click, and suddenly remembered a crucial piece of information the Doctor had given her. _The drone was a weapon_. Acting on instinct she reached around behind her, grabbing the thing and flinging it in a random direction. It stopped in midair and turned, facing her with two tiny, glowing cylinders that looked suspiciously like guns.

“And to think we were getting along,” she huffed, and booked it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so as far as the chapter title goes, it's a line from School House Rock which was stuck in my head and I popped it on so I could have a placeholder title. and then it sort of fit with the whole circle thing. like, don't come in my circle or i'll destroy your home planet!
> 
> that kinda thing.
> 
> so.
> 
> there you go


	4. the alien police look oddly french (it's quite the fashion statement)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Well hey,” she huffed, diving through a hedge and gaining a few precious meters as the drone forced its way through after her. “Maybe I’ll just round the corner and run into ‘em?” Her legs were going numb now. Any minute she’d probably collapse. “Wouldn’t that be something?”
> 
> And then she rounded the corner and slammed right into somebody’s chest.

“Right,” Amanda huffed, rounding yet another corner, the drone buzzing close behind. “Think and run again.” If she survived this, she was going to sign herself up for a marathon.

No Doctor this time, although she’d admit she hadn’t considered the possibility of him showing up the last time. That was a bit out of nowhere. The hell brought him to the neighborhood, coincidence?

She skittered to one side as a car stopped inches from her knee, yelling a quick, “sorry!” She didn’t exactly have time to wait for the traffic lights though. Ten blocks at a dead sprint and she still wasn’t any farther away from the flying bastard. Where was the beret brigade when you need them?

 _Okay, what do we know?_ she asked herself as she vaulted a park fence, startling a collection of birds. _We know the drone’s a deadly weapon well on its way to killing me._ She scoffed. _Well done brain, we been knew. What else?_

The drone was going to kill her because. . . she knew it was on Earth. Which meant it wouldn’t want to draw attention to itself, because if it did the situation would get sketchy because it’s kind of odd if a species is invading the planet to find a drone which in that situation would be kind of like ransacking your neighbor’s over a missing vase when it’s in their front room with a glowing neon sign pointing straight for it.

So, she needed to stay on public streets, places with a bunch of people. It would be harder to go unnoticed there.

And somehow find UNIT.

A bunch of soldiers in berets.

 _Lucky me_.

She didn’t exactly know where they would be, she thought as she cut across a plaza, bouncing between couples. Supposedly they would be in the city, but she wasn’t sure what city she was even in anymore, maybe Vegas? New York? Could be _Canada_ for all she knew, or maybe Paris, although the drivers had been shouting at her in English.

She was running out of breath, too. This was just _peachy_.

“Well hey,” she huffed, diving through a hedge and gaining a few precious meters as the drone forced its way through after her. “Maybe I’ll just _round the corner_ and run into ‘em?” Her legs were going numb now. Any minute she’d probably collapse. “Wouldn’t that be something?”

And then she rounded the corner and slammed right into somebody’s chest.

“Shit, sorry!” She was up in a millisecond. Stopping for even that long was dangerous, the thing could be on her at any minute. She tried to run, but strong hands on her shoulders kept her in place. She fought the hands. “Really, I’m sorry, but I have to run, it’s really important!”

“It’s alright, we’ve got it under control,” someone said, and while they sounded official she really wasn’t sure they did.

“No, no, it’s gonna kill me, and then they’re gonna invade-” She stopped, finally getting a good look at the guy. Red beret. “. . . Are you UNIT?”

“That we are.”

“Oh.” She relaxed and looked around, trying to regain her bearings. “Did you kill it?”

His eyebrows lifted. “Kill what?”

She sighed in relief. “Oh good. There’s this drone, it was- chasing me. But we can’t break it or they’ll destroy the planet.”

“Who’s going to destroy the planet?”

“This- this Siqnak guy. Scavenger. I think. Really I’m not sure, it’s all happened so fast.” Why was it so hard to _breathe_ all of a sudden?

He looked concerned, when had that happened? The soldier turned. “Doctor Jones, I need you!”

“Jones,” she mumbled, distracted, “I need a Jones. I was supposed to ask for a Jones, he told me to, a who Jones? Martha Jones, that’s who I need, a Martha Jones. You know a Martha Jones?” She lifted her head to address the soldier, coming up short when she realized he looked _worried_ now, when had that happened?

“Miss, what’s your name?” That was a new voice, a female voice. It was a nice voice.

“Amanda,” she answered, before she forgot the question.

“Alright Amanda, I need you to breath, can you do that for me?” the woman asked. “Just breathe.”

“No, no, I don’t have time to breathe,” she remembered in a flash. “He had a message, I have to get it to Martha Jones. I- was supposed to get to Martha Jones.”

“You have to relax,” the woman said soothingly. “You’re not getting enough oxygen in, you’re going to pass out.”

With a start she realized she was hyperventilating. When had _that_ happened? Why were so many things happening while she wasn’t looking? Was she panicking? Oh god, she was panicking. It happened again, she was panicking. No, no, but this was important! Oh, but so was oxygen. Oxygen was important. _Breathe, in and out. You remember calming cat? Breathe like calming cat._

“That’s it,” the woman encouraged. “In. . . and out.”

It didn’t take very long to steady her breathing, but it felt like too long. Everything felt like too long. _No, breathe!_ She did her best to shut down the train of thought before she derailed again.

“Now,” the woman said, “what’s the message?”

“I have to find Martha Jones,” she repeated, suddenly at a loss and clinging to the last direction she had.

“I’m Martha Jones,” the woman said.

“Oh,” Amanda released a breath, feeling a tense knot in her chest that she hadn’t realized was there release. “There were these aliens- Siqnak, he called them. They had a drone that they left on the Earth, and we brought it back to them, but they didn’t want it on the ship, they wanted it on Earth so they’d have an excuse to invade and steal all the resources, so the ship’s captain sent me back down with it and had it try to kill me because I knew.”

“Who sent you to get me?”

“This guy- the Doctor.”

Martha nodded. “Did he say anything else?”

“No. Just to find UNIT.”

Martha sighed. “Right. So he’s still up on the ship?”

“Yeah.”

“So maybe we should go get him.”

  


“One thing I still don’t understand.”

The Doctor was stalling. Now _that_ was a specialty. Making enemies spill their plans with a clever verbal sleight of hand. He’d at least know what he was fighting.

“If you wanted the artifact on the Earth, then why’d you sic a possessed army on the person who had it?” he continued.

“The previous Captain failed to see the bigger picture.” The Captain smirked again. “He was discharged.”

“The bigger picture?”

“The Great Dispute rages on. The resources are scarce, getting scarcer. We must survive. We must lay claim.”

“Great Dispute. . . between whom?”

The Captain didn’t make any move to respond. The guards abruptly moved towards him, grabbing hold of his arms. He fought to stay in place, keeping eye contact. “Oh come on, you’re going to kill me anyway, you might as well tell me.”

The guards stopped, and the Captain laced his spindly fingers together. “The Saega and the Ghol.”

Something clicked. “Civil war?”

The Captain gave him a long look, which he took as a yes.

“Since when did the Siqnak have factions?”

“The war, the Great War.” The Captain’s eyes bored into him. “The Time War.”

His jaw tightened.

“Civilizations, destroyed. So many resources, lost. War broke out among the Siqnak, fighting for the remains.”

“But there’s not enough,” he finished. “Not enough for the both of you. Is there?”

“The Earth will turn the tide,” the Captain said. “The Earth will be enough.”

“Oh, no it won’t.” The Doctor shook his head.

“The Earth will be enough.”

“It’s never enough. You Siqnak, you never have enough. You could control the universe and it still wouldn’t be enough.”

“The Earth will be enough to make peace.” The Captain leaned back, his hands returning to the armrests of his chair. “The Earth will end the war.”

Despite his loud protests, the guards dragged him away.

  


“You have a teleportation device?”

“Project Indigo.” Martha entered a passcode on the case. “It’s only for emergencies, but I think this would count as one.”

“I suppose so.” Amanda watched with fascination as the case hissed open to reveal a glowing harness, purple strips of light all up the straps. Martha carefully took it off the hooks, and, to the other girl’s surprise, held it out to her.

“Wait, you want me to go?” Amanda tried to search for any sort of indication that this was a joke.

Either Martha had a great poker face, or she was dead serious. “I’ve got to stay here. Someone has to make sure UNIT doesn’t start a war and give the Siqnak a real reason to invade. You know what to do when you get up there.”

“I really don’t!” She took the teleport device, holding it up gingerly. “I don’t even know how this works!”

“You just pull on the handles and think about the place you most want to be, and it’ll take you there. The code’s already in there, so there shouldn’t be anything else. I can help you put it on.”

Martha re-explained the plan as Amanda strapped into the harness. “Once you’re up there, you need to find the Doctor. He’ll know how to get a signal to the Shadow Proclamation, and from there they should send someone to help.” She pulled a marker from her pocket and uncapped it, scribbling something on the girl’s arm. “Radio won’t work in space, so that’s my number. You should be able to phone if you need anything.”

“So radio doesn’t work in space, but phones do?” She was beyond confused at this point. At least cell service was the least bizzare thing she’d heard that day, nevermind that they were seriously discussing cell service _in space_.

“If he’s given it the upgrade, yeah. Has he not done that yet?”

“No?”

Martha pulled in a breath. “Do me a favor and tell him to do that when you see him.”

She felt like that meme with all the equations, but she forced herself to nod.

“Either way, there should be a phone on the Tardis somewhere you can use if you need.” Martha tightened the last strap. “You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.” She bounced on the balls of her feet, psyching herself up.

“Good luck.” Martha stepped back and gave a quick, somewhat half hearted two fingered salute.

Despite her nerves, Amanda mustered the energy to give her a quick smile. “Thanks.” She pulled in a deep breath and focused her mind, praying to God she wouldn’t just go to her bedroom, and pulled the handles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the doctor is hard to write. martha jones is harder. giving my character a chance to prove herself while keeping other characters in character is hardest.
> 
> because we all know had martha jones known that amanda was really only there due to coincidence and not because she'd been travelling with the doctor she never would have sent her up into space. she just watched this young girl go into shock; if she knew she'd never send her up. thus, i withheld the information from her so amanda could go up and it would be reasonable.
> 
> i hope i made it clear that martha thinks amanda has been travelling with the doctor


	5. what is this, amateur hour? (yes)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The screen listed all sorts of things, things she didn’t recognize. Like what even was a hyper temporal deregulator? Something to do with time, probably, that sounded vaguely dangerous. But an antineutrino kinematics transferator? Now they were just making up words. And why did aliens speak English? The Queen’s English, if she wasn’t mistaken. What was that about?
> 
> And why was there a touchscreen catalogue in a storage closet on a ship primarily controlled by telepathic circuits?! None of this added up. If she didn’t figure this out soon her whole head was going to explode, and that would be the end of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i picked a spot in the timeline, finally. we are post-donna, pre-the end of time.
> 
> how does that sound

The good news was she didn’t appear in her bedroom. The bad news was she also didn’t appear in the Tardis, which was what she’d been aiming for. Apparently she’d gotten a bit distracted, because she was standing in the doorway to the ship’s bridge, which was a bit far.

And then she wasn’t standing anymore because apparently Martha forgot to mention the acute and incredibly strong vertigo that teleportation gave a person.

She got to her feet when the spinning went from  _ the world is pitching around me _ to  _ rode the merry go round one too many times _ . None of the Siqnak were moving, which was good news for her. The bad news was she didn’t see the Doctor anywhere, and she also didn’t know if he was dead or alive, or where a Siqnak execution center would be.

That left plan B, which was of her own design. Evidently nobody had considered what she should do if the Doctor couldn’t be found. Then again, maybe there was something in the Tardis. Martha said there was a phone; she could ask for advice.

For the most part it was a simple progression of following hallways to the storage closet they’d left the Tardis in. There she ran into a  _ slight _ problem. There were a lot of storage closets in that one little area, and she wasn’t really sure which one the Tardis was in. Nevertheless, she hazarded a guess, which turned out to be right, and headed for the familiar blue box, pulling the door to the room closed behind her.

And the Tardis was locked.

Because of  _ course  _ it was locked. She let her hands drop with a sigh, staring mournfully at the closed doors. “It’s like leaving your car unlocked in a Walmart parking lot,” she mumbled. “What was I expecting?” She wanted to slide down onto the ground, but there were people counting on her. Now  _ that  _ was a terrifying thought. “I suppose Martha thought I had a key. Well, I don’t.”

Her lips quirked up in a tiny, wry smile. “I don’t suppose you could open for me?” Nothing happened. “Yeah, didn’t think so.” She set her head on the box with a sigh. “God, what am I gonna do?”

As if on cue, a screen next to the closet door blinked on. Caught off guard, she cautiously made her way over to it.

_ View Catalogue _ , the screen said in huge lettering at the top. It listed all sorts of things, things she didn’t recognize. Like what even was a hyper temporal deregulator? Something to do with time, probably, that sounded vaguely dangerous. But an antineutrino kinematics transferator? Now they were just making up words. And why did aliens speak English? The Queen’s English, if she wasn’t mistaken. What was that about?

And why was there a touchscreen catalogue in a  _ storage closet _ on a ship primarily controlled by telepathic circuits?  _ None _ of this added up. If she didn’t figure this out soon her whole head was going to explode, and that would be the end of it.

There was a back button at the top of the screen, so she tapped it, forcing herself to ignore the questions for a minute or two. Now she had a whole list of options,  _ Maps, Storage Catalogue, Personnel Files, Records _ . Why was she accessing all of this from an empty storage cupboard?!

Unless it wasn’t really a storage cupboard. It wasn’t storing anything after all. She’d looked around earlier and she hadn’t found anything, but maybe she just hadn’t been looking for the right thing. Heart in her throat, she tapped  _ Maps _ . The screen changed and zoomed in on a blinking red dot, likely the  _ you are here  _ dot. She zoomed out ( _ Why does it zoom out if you pinch your fingers together?! Is that universal or something?! _ ) to see the label for the section.  _ Heating Chambers. _

“Well what does that mean?” she hissed. Clicking on the title didn’t do anything, it just zoomed her back in on the section. No wait, it did do something, now there was a title on the room she was in:  _ Heating Chamber Control Room _ . So maybe that was why there was a screen with all sorts of information on it.

But why could she access the ship’s records from the heating chamber control room?!

She tapped  _ Advanced Controls _ , nevermind that an  _ alien spaceship _ had an advanced controls button like the one on a tumblr profile, and glanced through the options. One caught her fancy, a setting that allowed her to track the location of every Siqnak on the ship at that exact moment. Deciding not to question why they had a button like that, for the sake of her already struggling brain, she selected it and zoomed out on the map.

No surprises, there were a lot of yellow dots on the bridge. She did find a lot in a section labelled  _ Offensive _ . She figured if she zoomed in she’d find smaller labels like ‘medbay’ maybe, or ‘cannon room’ or ‘drone control’. Stuff like that. There were a lot in another section, labelled  _ Collection _ . Probably for their scavenging.

“Hang on, those ones are moving.” She zoomed way in on the two yellow dots, trying to track their movement. It was only when her red dot came into the picture that she realized they were coming that way.

Her way.

“ _ Shit! _ ” She abruptly switched off the option, backing out of the map and returning it to the catalogue screen she’d found it on.

“Hide, hide, hide,” she hissed under her breath, casting her eyes around for a sufficient spot. There were just a bunch of empty shelves, or what looked like shelves. And why were they there?! This wasn’t a storage cupboard, why did it look like one. “Somewhere to hide, where do I hide?” She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth anxiously. “You need to hide too, sweetheart,” she added absently, addressing the Tardis, “Can you turn invisible or something?”

The outside rippled, and abruptly vanished. She paused in her panic with an awed exhale. “Cool.”

Then she snapped right back into it. “Okay, family reunion hide and seek champion of 2011, if you can find a spot in an empty barn you can find one in an empty closet.”

Instinctively her eyes went to the ceiling. The Siqnak looked about her size, maybe five foot something. If she couldn’t see the top shelf, neither could they. That was good for her. That made the top and bottom shelves her best bet, and nothing at the back of the room. If they walked in the door they’d see her right away.

She heard their feet in the hallway, her breath catching in her throat. No more time to debate. Ready or not, here they came. She pulled herself onto one of the top shelves, lying flat against it and praying to God that it really was just decoration, because if it wasn’t she was absolutely and completely screwed. At least her phone couldn’t vibrate to give her away; no cell service in space.

The door opened.

It was just the one there. She didn’t know where the other had gone. This Siqnak wasn’t wearing a headset. They kind of looked like the guards from before, but she couldn’t be sure. After all, how should she know what the defining characteristic of individual members of an alien species was? She wouldn’t even be able to tell a female from a male cat if she tried.

The Siqnak shook its head and backed out of the catalogue, scrolling down the main list and selecting  _ Heating Chamber Controls _ . But if this was the Heating Chamber Control Room then  _ why weren’t the controls at the top of the list?! _ God, she was just angry now, forget confusion. None of this made sense, and hell yeah she was mad about it.

“What’s the room number again?” the Siqnak called out the still open door ( _ why did this one sound Australian?! _ She was going to  _ literally _ smack some answers out of the Captain if this kept up).

“Seven twenty two, can’t you read?” ( _ and this one’s speaking the Queen’s English? Oh man, I might just save the Siqnak the trouble and off myself right here and now _ ).

“Seven twenty two, auto cycle.” They made it sound like a wash cycle, and maybe it was. Were they on laundry duty? She watched as they altered levels with their spindly fingers, pressing a large rectangular button to the side labelled  _ start _ big enough even she could read it from her perch on the shelf.

“That’s that.” The Siqnak backed out of the menu, shutting the screen down.

Then it left.

She didn’t dare breathe for what felt like forever (but was probably thirty seconds), but eventually she got down from the shelf and checked out the door cautiously, closing it once she was sure and leaning against it, breathing in and out slowly, trying to calm herself down. “Gone. They’re gone.”

The Tardis rippled back into view. She smiled at it tiredly. “Clever thing, you. You and your invisibility. Clever, clever thing.”

She swore she heard it hum in a way that almost sounded like  _ purring _ , but there wasn’t much time to focus on that.

“So, what do we think they were doing with room seven twenty two?” she mused, peering out the door again, noticing the numeral plaques set into the walls above each door. How had she missed those again?

She turned the screen back on, navigating to the Heating Chamber Controls. There was a long list with the room numbers, but only one was labelled  _ In Use _ . Was it a bathroom? God, she hoped it wasn’t a bathroom. She’d much prefer a laundry room. Either way, she selected it, and then  _ View _ from the list of options that appeared afterward. A camera feed appeared on the screen. From the angle she thought it was in a corner near the door, aimed towards the rest of the room.

The room was full of steam, or maybe smoke? It kind of reminded her of the fog from earlier, when they’d first arrived. Was that what it had been? Someone had been using a Heating Chamber. She supposed maybe they’d opened the door and some of the fog had gone into the hallways. Question was,  _ why _ were they using the room? What for? It probably wasn’t just a Siqnak sauna.

“You think maybe they have a ventilation fan?” she mumbled, squinting at the screen and subconsciously leaning in, trying to see through the fog. Vaguely she saw a dark shape, moving around in the fog, but she couldn’t be sure if it was actually something or her eyes playing tricks. She skimmed the screen, trying to find something helpful.

“Come on, screen,” she mumbled rhythmically, not rapping so much as singing without changing notes as she tapped one finger on the screen, trying to think. “Show me the good shit.”

“Amanda?”

She almost punched the screen. As it was she dropped into a crouch, completely on instinct, her fingers gripping either side of the screen. It took a couple seconds before she registered whose voice it was. “Doctor?”

“Yes, it’s me! How did you get back on the ship?”

“I- found Martha. Like you said.” She straightened back up, uncertain. “Where are you?”

“Heating Chamber 722 apparently. Why would Martha put you back on the spaceship?”

“She said she needed to keep the government from starting a war.” Part of her wanted to break the cycle of question and answer they’d somehow slipped into but also she really really wanted to know what in all heck a Heating Chamber was, so she asked.

“Right. Essentially it’s a Siqnak bathhouse. First it gets all steamed up, then magma spills from the ceiling, and then they drain it.”

“So it’s a lava shower?”

“Magma, but yes.”

“I fucking knew it,” she mumbled. “Magma mermaids. Fucking called it.”

“Sorry?”

She chose  _ not _ to repeat what she’d said. “You said you were an alien, so can you survive magma?”

“Well. . . no.”

“Neat.” She poured over the screen, searching for an emergency stop. What did a master override even look like?  She didn’t even know what all the buttons on her microwave did, why was she trying to do this herself? “How do I stop it?”

“There should be a control room somewhere in the corridor.”

“Yeah, been there, am there, can’t find an off switch,” she huffed, the words coming out clipped as she scrolled through options.

“Semi-telepathic screen, just think about what you’re looking for. Focus in on it!”

“What, like the teleport?”

“Sure! Yes! If you’d like!”

Okay, sounded easy but probably wasn’t, but worth a try all the same. She focused her energy on the words,  _ emergency stop. _ Or was that too specific? Should she be thinking just plain  _  stop _ instead?  _ Dammit just pick one! _ She slammed her eyes shut, flattening her palm on the screen as she focused on the concept, steadfastly ignoring the ominous hissing like evaporating water coming from the screen.  _ Stop, stop, stop, stop- _

Abruptly she felt a hand on her shoulder. Without thinking she yelped and slammed her elbow into whatever it was, pulling away from the screen. She gasped. “Oh fuck, I’m sorry! I didn’t think- oh god-”

The Doctor massaged his gut. “You’re- a lot stronger than you look.” She blushed. “But maybe, watch your language.”

“Sorry.”

“Now!” He bounded over to the Tardis. “Let’s see if Martha’s found the drone, shall we?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> full disclosure, i made it to capaldi without actually watching The End of Time. so, i'll have to do that. eventually. but i am afraid to.
> 
> anyway if this doesn't properly fit to that, there's a good reason for that.


	6. what're you gonna do, snitch? (you bet)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She shouldn’t be making jokes; there was a drone out to kill her.
> 
> Cloudy with a chance of death.
> 
> . . . . .
> 
> If she died, she would deserve it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am so tired and without motivation here's a chapter anyway hope she's satisfactory, we've got one left to the end of the 'episode' and she'll be a short one; it just didn't seem to fit here
> 
> figured i'd at least put a 'next' button between the aliens and the sappy shit yknow

_Now_ they were back in familiar territory. It felt odd calling it that, but also it had been the lay of the land for the past few hours (which felt simultaneously like they’d lasted for years and for seconds), so it was about as familiar as this sort of bizarre thing got. And what was this familiar territory?

The Doctor bounced around rambling, and Amanda trailed behind while pretending to understand the crazy words he spewed like he was talking about how to make a microwave macaroni and cheese.

“If UNIT has the drone we can send a signal to the Shadow Proclamation to send in the troops to uphold galactic law,” he said as he pulled a cell phone from god knew where amid the Tardis controls. “That should be enough to convince the Siqnak to back off.”

“And if it’s not?” she asked, knowing full well how their last attempt at convincing them had gone.

“We’ll figure something out.”

She mentally translated that to something like, _I’ll burn that bridge when I get there_. She was starting to realize his planning went about as well as her outlining an essay at midnight right before it was due.

Which was to say, not well at all.

“Ah, Martha!” he practically shouted enthusiastically. “Have you got that drone yet?”

“Not yet.” The woman’s familiar voice resonated from all around, like every single one of the strange circles in the Tardis wall was a speaker, or maybe it just had incredible acoustics. “We’ve got a lock on its location but we haven’t managed to get it. It keeps escaping.”

“And you’ve tried everything?”

“Everything we can think of, although I suppose you might think of something more.”

“Hang on, we’re on our way.”

Somehow, Amanda sensed what was probably going to need to happen. She didn’t dare say it, because, for one, it was kind of a scary prospect and if nobody else had thought of it she wasn’t about to say it.

The Tardis shook, rattling her thoughts (and nerve) along with it. She gripped the console, doing her best to stay out of the Doctor’s way as he flicked levers and twisted a few dials.

They landed in the midst of UNIT lines, probably a temporary base. She kind of felt like a little kid at the grocery store as they stepped outside, highly intimidated and terrified to lose their parents. Except it wasn’t a grocery store because there were people with guns and berets jogging around, and she wasn’t with her parents, it was actually this alien with a spaceship and friends in military organizations who treated risk like it was the weather forecast, or like, a normal Taco Tuesday.

She shouldn’t be making jokes; there was a drone out to kill her.

 _Cloudy with a chance of death_.

. . .

If she died, she would deserve it.

She mostly overlooked the enthusiastic reunion between Martha and the Doctor. They clearly had history, but it was none of her business. What _was_ her business was watching for the drone. She didn’t know if it could turn invisible or change shape, so she just kept her eyes peeled and hoped for the best.

If she could figure out what ‘the best’ was.

There was a lot of technical talk going on. The Doctor had his sonic screwdriver out, and a tangle of wires, and some box. A radio? No, some sort of ancient boombox. Had he just barrelled into an antique store and stolen their boombox while she wasn’t looking? She hadn’t thought she’d zoned out for that long. Then again, the drone was tiny and her life depended on her noticing it if it came for her.

“The signal should disable it,” the Doctor said around the wires he had in his mouth (wasn’t that unsafe? but she supposed he was an alien, so maybe it was fine for him). “I just need to get close to it.”

“Well we’ve lost sight of it for the moment,” Martha said, watching him work without giving any sign that his behavior was abnormal. Maybe he just liked chewing on wires. “It should turn up at some point though. We’re scanning photos on the internet for traces, but we haven’t gotten any hits since we last cornered it, around here.”

Something in there niggled Amanda. Places like Twitter, right? Social media sites. _Maybe_ she was crazy, but if she wasn’t... she took out her phone.

At some point the Doctor must’ve glanced up, because she heard him sigh. “We’re facing aliens sucking the Earth dry and you’re taking a selfie?”

“It’s not for vanity if that’s what you’re concerned about,” she said, flashing a soft smile and a peace sign to her phone’s camera, careful not to get UNIT in the background. “But you said you were scanning the internet, so I checked if people were flipping out over glitches, and they were. Apparently people’s posts are being deleted, but only pictures, and only of a certain area, so the drone’s connected to the internet somehow and it’s been deleting pictures that could alert UNIT to its location.”

The Doctor’s jaw dropped. “That’s _brilliant_.”

She blushed. “Not really.”

“So what was the selfie for?”

“The Captain sent the drone to kill me, so if it’s scanning the internet for photos, it’ll see my selfie and come running.” She tapped her screen. “And lucky for it, I turned my location on.”

“Amanda Jackson you’re a _genius_!” He suddenly leapt to his feet and took her by the waist, spinning her around. She giggled, slightly caught off guard. As if suddenly realizing what he was doing, he set her back on her feet, abruptly busying himself with the modified boombox again.

“So we just wait for it to show up?” Martha said, looking for all the world like she was pretending that hadn’t happened (although probably that was just Amanda projecting again).

“That’s right!” the Doctor said cheerfully.

 _That sounds like fun,_ she thought, even though she’d been doing that since they’d landed back on Earth however long ago. Anyway, at least she knew it would probably come in guns blazing. No more searching for a tiny silver blur. That thing was probably going to come out of the sky, firein’ its lazer.

And she hated herself for the outdated reference as soon as she’d made it. Good lord, what was this, 2005? She hadn’t even been _online_ when that meme happened. Honestly, she was going to unplug herself for life if she was going to pull things like that, I mean really. That was just uncalled for.

What was really uncalled for was the drone reminding her of her failings as it swooped in, shooting its cannons all around her general area. Thanks, drone. And they’d been getting along too. Fortunately for her, the Doctor had extended the Tardis shields so she could stand outside the box without either of them being hurt (her or the Tardis).

“Oi, drone!”

She wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but the drone didn’t turn away from the assault it was mounting on the Tardis’ shields (she really hoped they wouldn’t run out, it would be awful if the Tardis got damaged). Undeterred, the Doctor hefted the boombox over his head. “Hope you like the classics!”

She had time to think  _ if he wired that thing to play Footloose I’m going to scream _ before music blared out of the speakers, sounding vaguely like a bass boosted version of  _ Toxic _ . Not bass boosted. Earrape. That was  _ not _ a classic. Was he making a joke? He was the only one to get it.

Either way, the drone shuddered, its attack stopping. It began to float down, shuddering in midair, until it settled on the ground, unmoving. The Doctor shut off the music, and Amanda suddenly registered that despite hating the ear bleeding sound of the song she’d forgotten to cover her ears.

“Why that one?” she asked.

“It was on the cassette.”

Right. Boomboxes probably took cassette tapes (although how would she know, she’d never had one). She had no previous desire to hear earrape  _ Toxic _ , but hey, she was here now, might as well enjoy it.

That was false she was not enjoying it she very much wanted to go back to a time where she hadn’t heard it.

“So what now?” she asked.

“Now,” he tucked the boombox under his arm and scooped up the now unmoving drone, “we get this back on the ship and call the Shadow Proclamation.”

“So that’s an organization?” she said wonderingly. “Not just some fancy galactic law like- I don’t know, the U.S. Constitution?”

“Yes, it’s an organization. And the laws are a lot more binding than the U.S. Constitution.”

That was a relief. Every white guy in politics seemed to be circumventing the rules of that document, she certainly didn’t need aliens doing it too. The country was doing bad enough, thank you.

So anyway, she supposed they were back on plan Contact the Cops for what felt like the millionth time even though it was the first time they’d actually tried it. If it didn’t work though, her heart was going to explode. She could barely handle long essays, this whole world endangerment thing really wasn’t sitting well with her.

The Doctor pulled the lever again and the wheezing sound filled her ears again as she held to the console for dear life. “Is it supposed to make that sound?”

He spun a dial, glancing up at her. “Course it is.”

“Okay.” She stabilized herself against the controls as the deep _thunk_ she’d come to realize meant landing sounded. “So what, we walk out and hand them the drone?”

“Nope!” The Doctor aimed his sonic at the device and waited just long enough for the machinery to start whirring before immediately pitching it out the Tardis door. He closed the doors with a satisfying click and turned back with a huge smile like he’d solved everything.

“The heck was that?”

“That,” he bounded back up to the controls, spinning the screen around the console, “was step one of the plan.”

“Care to share with the class?” She joined him by the console, not really sure where the sudden burst of sass was coming from. Actually, scratch that, not the sass: the confidence.

“First, get the drone back into Siqnak hands, which I just did. I deleted the order to kill you so instead its primary goal is to go back home, in this case back to the ship. Once the drone is back, we give them one final chance to back down, record their response, and if they refuse, we notify the Shadow Proclamation.” He flicked a lever, maybe for drama, maybe because he needed to. “Simple as that.”

The screen fuzzed in, displaying a view of the Siqnak console room. “Ah, hello! The Doctor speaking. See, we’ve returned your drone. Again. So, this is your final chance to back off.”

“Or what?” the Captain snarled. “You’ll call the cops on me?”

The Doctor pretended to consider that. “Yeah.”

“Go ahead,” he hissed. “We are not afraid.”

The Doctor laced his fingers together. “Let me put this in perspective. We’ll say you back down. All you would be losing is maybe some pride, maybe a few Earth resources. But if you don’t back down, and the Shadow Proclamation get involved, not only will you lose out on all that, but likely you’ll also lose every resource you currently have on board, your lives, and your ship.” He leaned forward. “What’ll it be?”

She could practically _hear_ the tense music swelling in her ears as the Captain’s giant eyes slid closed briefly. She wasn’t super well versed in alien psychology or anything, but she was pretty sure he was conceding. She hoped he was, anyway; he’d be a fool not to.

“We will withdraw,” he said in his watery voice. She pulled away so her very unprofessional expression of blind glee wouldn’t be broadcast to him. The Doctor, to his credit, kept a calm expression.

“Good choice.”

“We will see each other again, Doctor.”

“I dunno, big universe.”

The Captain was undeterred. “Until then.”

The communication cut out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is the character's inner monologue too annoying? i can cut down if you guys hate it; it's just super fun for me to write, but i understand if it's not so fun to read
> 
> let me know if something doesn't make sense or someone's acting off.
> 
> i keep noticing inaccuracies in the rest of the story (like she calls it the tardis before she actually knew what the tardis was in the first chapter so i had to hecking FIX THAT). so y'know she's a work in progress, i'm doing my best but i can't spot everything. let me know so i can fix it
> 
> anyway have a nice day my dudes


	7. college smollege i fought aliens katherine what did you do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “See you around then.” She gave a little two fingered wave (she’d never been good at goodbyes) and headed down the sidewalk towards her house, turning back when she heard the now familiar wheeze of the Tardis engines as she started up, getting a damn good look at that amazing blue box because this would be the last time she saw it and she never wanted to forget it.

“So you’re not actually travelling with her?” Martha confirmed, again.

“No. Just a bunch of coincidences.”

She glanced at him, seeming surprised. “You believe in coincidence?”

The Doctor looked at her. “Yes? Is this a trick question?”

“Sorry, just you struck me as the kind of guy who thought everything happened for a reason.” She returned her gaze to the now excited young girl who stood across the courtyard, bouncing on her heels as one of the UNIT doctors looked her over for injuries. Usually that would be Martha’s job but she’d pled busy to talk to the Doctor before he vanished off into space again. Truthfully, when they tried to contact the Doctor they thought they’d get one of the other versions that had been trotting around, like the grey haired Scotsman or the young one with a thing for fezzes (she wasn’t sure if they were old or new, she hadn’t had a chance to meet them yet).

She was really glad they’d gotten a Doctor she knew. They all worried, and it seemed less out of nowhere to check up on this Doctor, with his familiar face, than maybe the cross Scot.

“So you haven’t found anyone? Since the whole stolen planet incident, I mean.”  _ Since Donna,  _ she meant, but she wouldn’t say it. She knew what the answer would probably be, but she had to ask anyway.

He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Nope. Just me. Travelling.”

“She was right, you know. Donna.” She was hesitant to say the name, but did anyway. “You don’t do so well on your own.”

He didn’t say anything, just watched Amanda.

“I’d never have expected this was her first time saving the Earth,” Martha noted. “She handled it really well, if I’m honest. Pretty good for- how old is she? Twenty?”

“Eighteen.”

Martha did a double take. “Eighteen?”

“Nineteen in a couple months, but yes.”

Her mouth hung open, an unpleasant emotion boiling in her chest. “Eighteen and inexperienced, and I sent her alone into an alien spaceship,” she whispered. “She just seemed so capable. I mean, one minute she was in shock and the next she saved your life and- the whole planet!”

“Yeah,” he said quietly, “she did didn’t she?”

_ Saving the Earth at eighteen _ . It was such a foreign concept. What was she doing at eighteen? Not that. That came later. Twenty two, if she remembered correctly. She couldn’t imagine travelling with him at that age, what that might have done. A flash of the Year resurfaced before she shoved it down, and she suddenly wanted to rescind the implied recommendation. What might it do to this virtual  _ child _ if he was to take her along?

Amanda came over before she could say anything else, to mend or worsen the situation, she wasn’t sure which. “So, that’s that.” She seemed breathless. “Doctor, do you mind giving me a ride home?”

He grinned. “Sure thing!”

Amanda nodded quickly, a tiny incline of the head, and turned to Martha. “It was lovely meeting you, Dr. Jones!” she chirped, and it suddenly struck her just how young eighteen really was.

“The pleasure was all mine,” she responded before it got weird, offering a smile of her own.

Martha watched the Tardis dematerialize and just hoped she hadn’t made anything worse.

  
  


“You seem to have enjoyed that,” the Doctor said.

Amanda shook her head even as she smiled. “I mean, not exactly. Like, in the moment it was the worst thing ever and I don’t know if I would voluntarily seek that out again. It’s- mostly just shock that I actually even handled that at all.”

“Martha seemed to think you did well.”

She blushed deeply. Coming from a woman like that- well, she was maybe going to spontaneously combust at the compliment. Last week she was having trouble with ordering at Mcdonald's and this week she’d literally saved the Earth. And met aliens? What?

“Do you do this all the time?” she asked.

He half shrugged. “Well, not on purpose. I’m just a traveller, really. But, I never could resist helping where I can.”

“How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Stay calm. Come up with a plan. I don’t know.” She spread her hands, at a loss, trying to voice her thought. “Just- not freak out under pressure.”

He glanced up at her. “Think you should be asking yourself that question.”

The Tardis stopped with that satisfying thunk. He pulled the doors open, and she stepped outside. They were on her street, down at the corner by the church. She saw the neighbors crawling home (not actually crawling, she just used the word for effect), none the worse for wear considering their alien possession. None of them gave her a second glance as they walked past.

“So,” she said, turning back to the Doctor, “I don’t suppose I’ll be seeing you around?”

“We’ll see,” he said.

“Personally I’m more interested in seeing this box of yours again.” She ran an almost awed hand down the corner. “Me and her, I think we’re bonded.”

He laughed a bit at that, and she beamed because  _ she’d made this magical man laugh _ , even if it was really just out of pity at her terrible joke.

“See you around then.” She gave a little two fingered wave (she’d never been good at goodbyes) and headed down the sidewalk towards her house, turning back when she heard the now familiar wheeze of the Tardis engines as she started up, getting a damn good look at that amazing blue box because this would be the last time she saw it and she never wanted to forget it.

It was so hard not to skip as she headed home. It was like that time in freshman year when she’d stepped so far outside her comfort zone she almost couldn’t find her way back, only so much better.  _ So _ much better. I mean, sure, she couldn’t tell anyone, but at the very least this would make college so much easier on her. And really, that was one giant win in her book.

  
  


She was surprised to hear the wheeze of the engines, waking her at an ungodly hour.

Okay so maybe she’d been watching music videos at two in the morning but nobody had to know that but her.

It was pretty simple to throw on her boots and clip her keys to her belt loop. She hadn’t bothered to change for bed so she still had jeans on, and she wasn’t about to leave the house unlocked as she went chasing some phantom noise in the dead of night. This wasn’t the first time she’d thought she heard the engines, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. At this point she just sought it out to humor herself. Besides, maybe she’d actually go to bed once she found out that it was just that dick with the ocean wave hair backfiring his car again.

The Tardis sat in the clearing.

She was hit with an acute sense of déjà vu. It leaned against the same tree, in the same patch. Really the only difference was the moonlight and how it was in good condition this time, humming pleasantly. She cautiously moved up to the door and knocked.

It opened.

She pushed it open farther, seeing the Doctor leaning against the console, watching her.

“Funny seeing you here,” she said.

“Passing through,” he said. He pushed himself away from the console. “See, I was thinking. You were pretty clever, thinking of social media to lure the drone in. And you saved my life in the Heating Chamber.”

“Anyone could have done that.”

“But it wasn’t anyone. It was you.” He pointed towards her, tapping his finger in the air a couple times. “You kept your head even though you were scared.”

She wondered if Martha told him about her freaking out. God, she hoped not. It was embarrassing enough just doing it in front of the alien police, but if he knew about it too she was going to combust.

“Amanda, I’ve got a question for you,” he said abruptly. She leaned on the railing, giving her full attention. “While I was stranded here, you said you were waiting.” He made eye contact with her. “What were you waiting for?”

She blinked, not expecting that question out of all of the possibilities. She shrugged. “Not sure. It kind of depends on the day, really.” She trailed a hand across the railing, thinking about it. “Sometimes it feels like I’m just waiting for something to happen. Like, I feel like I’m too young to really do anything, and too old to start doing other things, and sometimes it feels like there’s just this right moment to do something, and that’s what I’m waiting for.”

She shrugged. “I mean, whatever it is, I’m still waiting, so.” She laughed. “Sometimes it feels like all I can do is throw myself into all kinds of distractions, you know? Just run straight into anything at all so I don’t feel like I’m waiting anymore.”

He nodded, still studying her. He meandered around the console, and she tracked his movement with her eyes. “One more question for you, Amanda Jackson.” He looked over his shoulder at her, a small almost mischievous grin stretching across his lips. “Do you like to travel?”

“Love it,” she said offhandedly. “I mean, it scares me to death, but all the new things to see how could I  _ not _ love it?”

“How do you fancy travelling across the universe with me?”

Her eyes lit up as she finally caught on. “Wait, really?” She could barely imagine it. More species than she could possibly dream up, all the culture and language and location, everything she could possibly have thought of and more. Abruptly, her spirits fell. “I can’t, I ship out for college tomorrow.”

“Well, I can travel in time as well.”

“ _ Shut up. _ ” She blushed the minute the words left her mouth, but she didn’t take them back. “So what, you could pop back and have tea with- with Ben Franklin or something?”

“Yep. Although, he preferred coffee.”

“That’s so  _ beyond  _ cool,” she breathed out.

“So, what do you say?” he asked. “All of space and time, right outside that door, and back in time for tea.”

“I might need a nap, but I’m all in,” she enthused, and he beamed.

“So any burning questions?” he asked, turning to the controls. “Anyplace you desperately want to see?”

“I’ve got a million and one questions,” she said eagerly. “But first and foremost, why did the Siqnak speak English?”

“They didn’t. That’s the Tardis translation matrix. It gets inside your head and translates all sorts of languages.”

“Even obscure slang terms and idioms? Regional dialects? Music?”

He opened his mouth, closed it, and then said, “I don’t know.” He grinned. “How about we find out?”

“Works for me.” She gripped the console as he turned dials and flicked switches, still familiar with the process despite the Siqnak having happened some two months prior.  _ I always wanted a gap year _ , she thought fondly as she watched him grab the lever she recognized as the one to start the trip.

“Ready?” he asked.

“You bet.”

He threw the lever, and the Tardis shook as she let out a whoop of excitement.

If you’d asked her a year prior if she though she could make it there, she’d have responded that she didn’t think she could even make it across the graduation stage, let alone to the rest of the universe, but really, there was no place she’d rather be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i took my damn time editing this chapter cause it's like,,, The Single Most Important Chapter in the whole story thus far, since one little conversation serves as the push for the entire rest of the story and i gotta make it believable, you feel?
> 
> anyway, next 'episode' will come once i actually plot out what's gonna happen. i dOn'T KnoW iF yOu CaN tElL (caps bc of course you can) but the entire Siqnak thing was basically improv. I made it up as I went. they were just supposed to be some generic alien threat she proved herself against and now they're scavenging lava mermaids like where did that even come from??
> 
> anyway i guess they set an ok tone for the rest of the story. jury's still out if they properly served a storytelling purpose or if they're just a throwaway plot device. time will tell
> 
> haha cause it's a time travel fic
> 
> n e way hope you enjoyed the first mess of an episode. more to come at some point once i finish my case study of every companion's first real adventure aboard the tardis up to and excluding season 11 as well as Classic Who as i don't have access to that. see you in the next one.
> 
> which will probably take awhile. i'm trying to turn the sky orange.


End file.
